Excerpt from remarks made at NHSA’s Parent Conference in New Orleans on December 9, 2014:
“Saying that I am a Head Start kid is like saying I am a High School graduate or that I am currently enrolled at a university. It is a point of pride for me, an accomplishment that I am extremely proud of. The Head Start family laid the foundation of my many accomplishments.

"1965 was a good year," recalls Kelly Cederholm, Head Start alum and current Head Start Teacher of The Year. "I was a barefoot, pony-tailed, shy little girl and someone told my parents of a new program that was coming to town. It was the year that Head Start would begin all over the country, and I was a part of the first class ever in New Hampshire!"

I was born and raised in Carrizo Springs, TX, a small, close-knit town an hour north of the US-Mexico border. Since before I was born my parents and their families would migrate up north 1,400 miles and work the sugar beet fields near Wahpeton, ND. My father’s parents and siblings would migrate every summer since he was 6 years old. Growing up in a migrant household was tough at times. Both of my parents finished High School but decided not to further their education so they could care for their family.

We in Head Start definitely have evidence fatigue. I have nothing against evidence but evidence-based-this and evidence-based-that sometimes gets to be too much evidence. That is why what I have to share here is so galling, particularly because I have to concede that Bob, my husband, is right by making me aware of the evidence of just how valuable a single button can be.

How do you you become a doctor? For some, like Latifa Sage Silski, you attend Head Start!
"I remember only having peas and carrots to eat,” Latifa said, recalling her time before Head Start. “We would move from place to place. Then finally, one day we were staying at my dad’s friend’s house and there was a Head Start program nearby. My mom enrolled me.”

As a young boy, growing up in Jonesboro, Arkansas, Brandon Walker participated in a Head Start program that his mother was determined to seek out and utilize. Head Start was where he made his first friend and where he felt safe. Remembering his time there, Brandon said, "We were out in the playground – we were in the sand lot building castles, and a little boy poured sand over my head. I cried and told the teacher – my earliest memory at Head Start is of a grownup defending me, coming to my rescue."

According to her mother, little Marina Fradera often cried when her mother would pick her up from the Goddard Riverside Head Start center in New York City, because she didn't know if she would be able to go back to the special place she loved so very much.

As a young family with many obstacles to overcome, my parents knew that they wanted to give their four daughters every advantage that was never afforded to them. So they enrolled each of us in the local Head Start program.